Indonesia Searchers Find Bodies At Russia Jet Wreckage

Jakarta May 10: Rescuers at the wreckage of a Russian Sukhoi Superjet plane that crashed into mountains in Indonesia on Wednesday say they have found no sign of survivors.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 vanished from radar screens 50 minutes after taking off from Jakarta for a brief demonstration flight.

On Thursday a helicopter found debris on the side of a cliff near a dormant volcano.

The spokesman for the rescue effort said a number of bodies had been found.

"So far we haven't found any survivors, but we are still searching," Gagah Prakoso said.

About 45 people are said to have been on board the aircraft.

It crashed into Mount Salak "around 1.5km [one mile] from the spot where the plane last made contact", Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on television earlier in the day.

"An investigation must be carried out immediately and thoroughly. Search and rescue operations must prioritise finding any survivors."

Eight Russian pilots and technicians, Indonesian airline representatives and journalists were among those said to be on board the plane.

Earlier reports had said 50 people were on board, but Indonesian agents of the Russian-made plane told the BBC this figure had been revised down because some people got off before take-off. (BBC)

7 Killed, 13 Injured In Classroom Collapse In Pakistan

Islamabad May 8 (Xinhua) :At least seven children were killed and 13 others injured as a classroom roof collapsed in Pakistan's eastern area of Shakar Garh on Monday, reported local Urdu TV channel Express.

According to local media reports, the incident took place at about 12:00 a.m. local time when a grade 4 classroom roof of a private secondary school in Shakar Garh, a town lying some 120 kilometers northeast of Lahore in eastern Pakistan, suddenly collapsed, killing four children on the spot and wounding over a dozen others.  Three injured later died in hospital, said the reports, adding that the seven killed children included three girls and four boys. Hospital sources said six out of the 13 injured including two teachers were in critical condition and the death toll could further rise. They said that three critically injured children have been shifted to Lahore, the largest city in eastern Pakistan.

There were an estimated 40 children aged between 8 and 10 in the classroom when the incident took place. All the children trapped inside the collapsed classroom were later recovered by rescue workers.

Rescue workers said that the building materials left over on the classroom roof by workers constructing a new building next to the classroom caused the collapse.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has sought a report on the incident and ordered hospitals to provide the best possible medical treatment to the injured people.

Francois Hollande To Set France On New Course After Win

Paris May 7: French President-elect Francois Hollande is to start work on forming a new government, after declaring to his supporters that his victory gave hope there would be an end to austerity.

Mr Hollande has vowed to rework a deal on government debt in eurozone member countries to focus on promoting growth.

The Socialist leader won just under 52% of votes in Sunday's run-off election.

Centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy is the first French president since 1981 not to win a second term.

Mr Hollande must act quickly to reassure other eurozone countries he is up to the considerable challenge he faces, reports the BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris. Mr Hollande has called for a renegotiation of a hard-won European treaty on budget discipline championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Sarkozy.

Mrs Merkel had congratulated the president-elect by phone and invited him to Berlin to hold talks soon.

Mr Hollande's campaign director, Pierre Moscovici, told AFP news agency that the two had agreed to work together on "a strong Franco-German relationship in the interest of Europe".

UK Prime Minister David Cameron also called Mr Hollande to congratulate him.

Mr Hollande feeds a renewed sense of hope in the country - particularly among the young - that amid the austerity, there can be jobs and salaries, our correspondent adds. Mr Hollande offers a fresh start - but the debt problems for France are still the same.

Jubilant Hollande supporters gathered at the Place de la Bastille in Paris - a traditional rallying point of the Left - to celebrate.

Mr Hollande - the first Socialist to win the French presidency since Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s - earlier gave his victory speech in his stronghold of Tulle in central France.

He said he would push ahead with his pledge to refocus EU fiscal efforts from austerity to "growth".

"Europe is watching us, austerity can no longer be the only option," he said.

After his speech in Tulle, Mr Hollande headed to Brive airport to fly to Paris to address supporters at the Place de la Bastille.

"I am the president of the youth of France," he told the assembled crowd of tens of thousands of supporters.

"You are a movement that is rising up throughout Europe," he said.Mr Hollande capitalised on France's economic woes and President Sarkozy's unpopularity.

The Socialist candidate has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than 1m euros a year. He wants to raise the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers and lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers.

In his concession speech, Mr Sarkozy told supporters: "Francois Hollande is the president of France and he must be respected."

The outgoing president said he was "taking responsibility for defeat".Hinting about his future, he said: "My place will no longer be the same. My involvement in the life of my country will now be different."

During the campaign, he had said he would leave politics if he lost the election.

Admitting defeat soon after polls closed on Sunday evening, centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy wished "good luck" to Mr Hollande.

Mr Sarkozy, who has been in office since 2007, had promised to reduce France's large budget deficit through spending cuts.

He becomes the latest European leader to be voted out of office amid widespread voter anger at austerity measures triggered by the eurozone debt crisis.

Mr Hollande is expected to be inaugurated later this month. A parliamentary election is due in June. (AFP)

Clinton Arrives In Bangladesh On Difficult Mission

Dhaka May 6: (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived on Saturday for a difficult mission in Bangladesh where violence and a crackdown on the opposition threaten new instability. Clinton, coming from a row in China over a Chinese dissident, was set to sign a new partnership agreement with the impoverished South Asian nation.

She is the first US secretary of state to visit Bangladesh since Colin Powell in 2003 amid chronic political infighting in the world's third largest Muslim-majority country.

The last few weeks have seen rallies and strikes over the disappearance of regional opposition figure Ilias Ali in mid-April, who supporters say was abducted by security forces. Four people have died in the unrest.

Following a rally in the capital last weekend and a series of explosions at a government building complex, police have charged and arrested a number of senior figures from the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

A US official said that Clinton would meet Saturday with both Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and BNP leader Khaleda Zia, who have dominated Bangladesh's politics for decades and whose mutual dislike is as intense as it is personal.

The official said Clinton would promote democracy and good governance but look to broader interests with Bangladesh, a US partner in counter-terrorism efforts and the world's largest contributor to UN peacekeeping.

"Secretary Clinton's trip is an opportunity to take the bilateral relationship to a new level with this moderate, tolerant, democratic, Muslim-majority nation that offers a viable alternative to violent extremism," the State Department official said on customary condition of anonymity.

Bangladesh is "a voice for regional stability in a troubled region," the official said. Analyst Manzur Hasan, a professor of Brac University in Dhaka, believes Clinton will press Hasina over governance problems in the notoriously corrupt and politically unstable country.

"She is arriving at an awkward moment in a situation of political turmoil when the country is facing some serious issues and difficulties because of the return of the confrontational politics and street protests," he told AFP.

Recent problems for Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh's only Nobel peace prize winner and a personal friend of Clinton and her husband Bill, will be another thorny issue for the secretary of state to address in her meetings.

Yunus was forced out of his ground-breaking micro-credit bank last year and has since claimed he is the victim of a vendetta that will result in the government seizing his empire of social businesses aimed at alleviating poverty. Clinton will meet Yunus on Sunday, the US official said.

In Dhaka, the government has talked up Clinton's visit as an event that will take ties to "a new height".

"It will be a new beginning of bilateral relations between the two countries," Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said on Thursday. "Her visit is extremely important for Bangladesh."

Moni told reporters Dhaka would press for lower tariffs on its exports to the US, its largest market, and the two nations were in the final stage of signing an agreement to boost economic ties.

Gowher Rizvi, international affairs adviser to the Bangladeshi prime minister, told AFP the partnership dialogue would be "similar to the ones the US have with India and China".

Clinton's trip to China has been overshadowed by a row over blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng who fled to the US embassy last week.

US officials said Friday that Beijing had agreed to let Chen leave for the United States, after a controversial initial deal under which the activist left US protection with promises for his safety inside China.

Clinton was due to leave Dhaka on Sunday for the eastern Indian city of Kolkata and then proceed to New Delhi for talks on expanding an alliance that has grown in its importance but is widely seen as having failed to blossom.

Myanmar’s Suu Kyi Sworn In As Member Of Parliament

Naypyidaw May 3 (AFP) - Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sworn in as a member of parliament Wednesday, opening a new chapter in the Nobel laureate’s near quarter-century struggle against oppression.

The 66-year-old stood to read the parliamentary oath in unison with 33 other members of her National League for Democracy party who were elected to the lower house in April, an AFP reporter said.

Rupert Murdoch Unfit To Run Big Company: British Lawmakers

London May 2: A scathing British parliamentary report said Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch had shown “wilful blindness” over phone hacking at his News of the World tabloid and was not fit to run a major company.

The 81-year-old tycoon’s British newspaper wing, News International, also misled parliament during its inquiry into the scandal at the News of the World, which Murdoch closed down in disgrace in July 2011, the committee found.

“Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company,” the cross-party culture media and sport committee said in its long-awaited report on the scandal.

“If at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications,” it concluded.

“This culture, we consider, permeated from the top.”

Rupert’s son and heir apparent James Murdoch, 39, was guilty of “wilful ignorance” about the scale of hacking at the newspaper, which “clearly raises questions of competence” on his part, the report added.

The 121-page report also singled out former News Corporation executive chairman Les Hinton, former News of the World legal manager Tom Crone and the newspaper’s final editor Colin Myler as having misled the committee.

The panel said it was now for parliament’s lower House of Commons to decide “what punishment should be imposed” on those it thinks have treated the committee with contempt.

The 11-member committee was however split six to four — with the chairman not voting — as members of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party refused to endorse its conclusions.

Murdoch’s US-based News Corp. empire said it was “carefully reviewing” the report and would “respond shortly.”

“The company fully acknowledges significant wrongdoing at News of the World and apologizes to everyone whose privacy was invaded,” it said in a statement.

The News of the World was shut down as the phone-hacking scandal exploded with revelations that the tabloid had hacked the voicemails of a missing schoolgirl who was later found murdered.

Rupert and James — who was News International’s chairman and chief executive — both gave evidence to the committee on July 19 last year, when Murdoch senior was attacked with a shaving foam pie by a comedian.

The lawmakers on the panel found that News International instinctively sought to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing in the company.

The report said the integrity and effectiveness of parliamentary committees relied on the “truthfulness and completeness” of evidence submitted.

“The behaviour of News International and certain witnesses in this affair demonstrated contempt for that system in the most blatant fashion,” it concluded.

“Corporately, the News of the World and News International misled the committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking,” the report concluded.

This was done by “making statements they would have known were not fully truthful and failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth,” the committee said.

“Their instinct throughout, until it was too late, was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators, as they also professed they would do after the criminal convictions.

At a press conference after the publication of the report, opposition Labour lawmaker and leading News International critic Tom Watson said it was disappointing that the committee had not been able to vote unanimously.

“The story is not yet over. These people corrupted our country. They brought shame on our police force and our parliament,” Watson said.

But illustrating the divisions, Conservative committee member Louise Mensch complained the report was “partisan.”

Phone hacking at the News of the World came to the fore in the trial of its royal correspondent Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, who were jailed in 2007 for illegally accessing voicemails.

Scotland Yard reopened an investigation into hacking and other malpractice in January 2011 in which more than 40 people have been arrested, while a judicial inquiry into the scandal is also under way.

News International has meanwhile paid out millions of pounds in compensation to hacking victims.

Bin Laden Family Deported From Pakistan: Officials

Rawalpindi April 27 (AFP) – Osama bin Laden’s family were deported from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia Friday, officials said, nearly a year after the Al-Qaeda leader was killed in a US raid.

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Pak PM Guilty Of Contempt

Islamabad April 26: Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani was on Thursday held in contempt of court by the Supreme Court and sentenced till the rising of the court.

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Rescue of trapped Peru miners delayed

Peru,April 9 :A rescue operation to free nine miners trapped since last Thursday in a mine in southern Peru could be delayed to two to three days, a top official announced.

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Syria steps up offensive in Damascus suburbs

BEIRUT (AP),April 6: Syrian forces broadened an offensive against opposition fighters in three Damascus suburbs Friday in an apparent attempt to crush pockets of rebellion near the capital less than a week before an internationally sponsored cease-fire is to go into effect, activists said.

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China tries alleged smuggling kingpin: Xinhua

China,April 6 :The alleged mastermind of a multi-billion dollar smuggling racket whose extradition to China sparked a bitter diplomatic row with Canada went on trial Friday, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

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NATO fuel tanker blaze kills 7 in Afghanistan

Afganistan,April 6 :Seven people were burnt to death in southern Afghanistan when a fuel tanker supplying a NATO base crashed and set their vehicle on fire, officials said.

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Fierce fighting near Damascus ahead of truce

Syria,Apr 5:Fierce clashes between Syrian forces and rebels erupted near Damascus Thursday, monitors said, as Washington slammed an "intensification" of violence against regime opponents ahead of an agreed truce.

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Cambodia bodies identified as missing French family

Cambodian,Apr 5:DNA tests have confirmed that the remains of five people found in a submerged car in Cambodia in January are those of a Frenchman and his four young children, embassy officials said Thursday.

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China shuts websites‚ detains six for spreading online rumors

SHANGHAI March, 31: Chinese authorities shut 16 websites and detained six people accused of spreading rumors of unusual military vehicle movements in Beijing, state media reported, after the political downfall of one of the ruling communist party's senior leaders.

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